Purpose of mana?

So what is the purpose of mana?

I rarely see any caster class have issues with mana... never seems to drop below 90%. Watching frost mages duel right now and mana never got lower then 95%. Seems to me that running out of mana in pvp is extremely rare and in pve as well no matter what mana class u play or what u cast or how much u cast.

Mana has changed. It pretty much only affects healing classes (with the great exception of arcane mage, and some rare cases of extreme shadow priest multidotting).
And I am especially not only talking about healing-specced classes, but mana is a greater issue to hybrid DDs in PVP when they have to heal.

I run out of mana if I only spam Earthquake on my Elemental Shaman. :P

It's really problematic to keep caster dps competitive if they can run out of mana. There's no standing around or letting GCDs pass as a dps class. If you do, you fall behind. Mana is generally a non-issue for caster dps in today's WoW, but they mostly have an additional mechanic or ressource they have to manage which is actually their "real" ressource.

The game is very old and partially based on archaic concepts for role playing games or MMOs, and it's obvious that they aren't happy with a lot of stuff, but there's only so much you can do to a existing complex (and technically limited) system. Sometimes they find workarounds, like what they did with rage for example. I'm sure that if they would redesign WoW from scratch, tons of stuff would be completely different.

Personally, I'd rather see them take the game towards unique resource mechanisms, as they have with Monks, Death Knights, Paladins & Warlocks, and remove Mana. Rogues could keep energy, and hunters could keep focus, but there is little purpose to a near un-ending pool of power.

Having the game more based on a limited resoruce, along with cooldown managements (of abilities, not just popping Bloodlust) would make the game more exciting then just spamming 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,3,3,4,5,6. It would also help slow down PvP as there wouldn't be a constant pounding on the enemy team, which would mean healers don't need to be able to constantly heal.

Slow down the game, make it more about awareness, control and focus then about a random smashing on the keyboard in a flurry of cooldowns, trinkets and potions.

Personally, I'd rather see them take the game towards unique resource mechanisms, as they have with Monks, Death Knights, Paladins & Warlocks, and remove Mana. Rogues could keep energy, and hunters could keep focus, but there is little purpose to a near un-ending pool of power.

Having the game more based on a limited resoruce, along with cooldown managements (of abilities, not just popping Bloodlust) would make the game more exciting then just spamming 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,3,3,4,5,6. It would also help slow down PvP as there wouldn't be a constant pounding on the enemy team, which would mean healers don't need to be able to constantly heal.

Slow down the game, make it more about awareness, control and focus then about a random smashing on the keyboard in a flurry of cooldowns, trinkets and potions.

Sounds like a horrible suggestion to making the game more turn based.
Wouldnt do anything good for the game, and would require complete overhauls for all classes..

Trylb / Galesin
Winners never quit, Quitters never win
Nobody Said It Was Easy

Mages go oom if they stop doing damage and start spellstealing.
Spriests go oom if they have to MD / heal a lot and VTs get dispelled.
Boomkins go oom if they have to offheal and get trained so can't eclipse.
Enhance Shamans go oom if they heal and can't melee or connect to a target.
Elemental Shamans go oom if they have to offheal and can't get lightning bolts off.

Nearly every damaging class who has mana has the constant worry of going oom, and once you're oom it's extremely hard to recover. Generally if they are performing well and don't need to offheal and can keep training damage, they wont go oom. If you force them to offheal and dispel they'll oom extremely fast. It's a near-perfect design. There has to be some limitations on Hybrid defensive offhealing, but no limitation on their damage (otherwise rogue/warr/feral/hunter etc would always be better).